pondering collections on a monday morning

Our American Revolution from Dark Rye on Vimeo.

veronica shared this wonderful video and, naturally, it has me thinking about the things we save and the things we display and the things we tuck away. i have, i believe, all, of sabin's baby teeth in these little plastic treasure chests that we at some point got from the dentist. they are tucked away in a box with most of my jewelry and are not on display. but, as you know if you've been around here for any time at all, we have an awful lot of other things on display and you know that collecting is an important part of who i am.

the collections have been ever-shifting, probably starting clear back with the 98 identical first place plaques i won with skip's galley lad, my black and white paint/pinto gelding during the summer of '82. i pounded 98 nails into the wall of my bedroom and hung them all up. after that, there were the marilyn monroe collectible plates, which were dutifully hung on the walls in various apartments from iowa city to scottsdale to chicago. now, i just use those plates for dessert and they always make people smile. i've not reached a point where i can part with them, so we box them up (in their original boxes from the franklin mint) and move them from place to place. there was a period in the late 80s, early 90s, where christmas barbies were the thing. happily, i've finally gotten past that one, as well as the beanie baby obsession (tho' there is a big bag of those somewhere here in this house as i write this).

today, the primary collection on display has to be books. books make a room and this house utterly lacks charm, so i might as well do something to make it cozy and that something is books. they really do help. until recently, i had our bobbaloo collection out on one of the bookshelves, but have tucked them away for now because the cats are very hard on them. what is it with cats and wool? and then, of course, there are my minifigures standing in two long rows in the windowsill above my desk. the things we collect make us smile or comfort us somehow or just bring forth memories, as they make clear in this video. a jar of stones, another of shells, another of fossils remind us of walks on beaches all over the world.

at the moment, the living room shelves and the windowsills contain quite a few bits of natural ephemera - feathers, a single perfect small egg found in the forest, acorns, a delicate ball of light green oak moss, a fetching bit of stick. these are the things that slowly shift out, as other finds replace them or the cats, thinking that a single feather is just as good as an entire bird, play with them and abandon them under a chair.

i have much of my fabric stash in boxes against one wall of the dining room. this house has a tendency to be a bit musty and damp and that room is the least musty and damp, so it's both to protect the fabric and to have it there, where just seeing it makes me happy. in recent days, i've covered the dining table with fabric projects and so it's also served a purpose as workspace and it's nice to have the fabrics at hand. a room full of books and fabric lends warmth and hominess to a space otherwise completely lacking in charm (they seriously used old, rough boards, quite possibly repurposed from palettes, as the (very low) ceiling in this room, they're painted white, but you could still get a handful of splinters from them).

i think my many and ever-changing collections help me rebel at what can be a clinical, spare danish style. i love the clean lines of danish furniture and light fixtures, but not the minimalism and invisibility of personal touches in many danish homes. what items are on display tend to be the same candle holders and the same vases, so i drift towards a style more comforting and more my own through my collections. and anyway, this little video makes me feel more normal for doing that. it's what makes a house a home. watch it and enjoy.

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this is an articulate piece on the decline of the american empire.

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these photos bring new meaning to the words makeup artist.

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americans try to label european countries on a map of europe.
it doesn't go well.

to be fair, when brits were asked to label the states
it didn't go any better.

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what if the planets were as close to us as the moon is?

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coffee.